Capitalizing on small farmers
“Cultivate” (Ezraa) … a new initiative that aims to help small farmers while boosting agricultural output, and its seeds are about to yield fruit with the advent of the wheat harvesting season.
The plan focuses on planting Egypt’s strategic crops such as wheat and soybean, an essential component in feed, to make them available for local consumption and decrease their imports.
The initiative was launched by the Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS) in October 2022 under the umbrella of the National Alliance for Civil Development Work (NACDW). The NACDW kicked off in March 2022, the Year of Civil Society, with the membership of 34 foundations nationwide.
In its initial phase, the campaign targets planting 150,000 feddans of wheat and giving the 100,000 participating small farmers in 300 villages in eight governorates 1.5 feddans each to expand agricultural lands planted with wheat. It provides high-quality seeds in cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture.
These statements came in a press interview conducted by Margaret Saroufim, the coordinator of Cultivate and head of the Local Development Unit at the CEOSS, to Al-Ahram Weekly it is the culmination of years of working closely with small farmers.
The CEOSS has extensive experience in agriculture, seeing that its efforts must be pooled together to curb the repercussions of the Russia-Ukraine war which has led to skyrocketing prices of imported goods, Saroufim said.
The organization has a database comprising 40,000 small farmers, Saroufim noted, adding that 25 percent of Egypt’s labor force works in the agricultural sector and that 85 percent of these are small farmers.
According to the CEOSS, small farmers own or rent no more than three feddans of agricultural land. “The organization works with small farmers to improve and increase their production and reduce production cost.”
A farmer may have the land but lacks the knowledge and the means… “That’s where the CEOSS comes in,” she said. “The organization provides technical support, agricultural guidance, and courses. In the latter, an agricultural expert explains to farmers in four or five sessions the right practices to plant wheat or soybean,” Saroufim explained.
These practices include preparing the land for planting, the appropriate time for sowing, and the means to eliminate pests, weeds, and diseases, all through to the harvesting date, she stated.
The CEOSS has been supporting small farmers since the 1990s with the private sector. Before the launch of Cultivate, the organization had been coordinating between businessmen and small farmers and drafting marketing contracts between the CEOSS, businessmen, and farmers to secure the rights of all parties. Businessmen provided farmers with high-quality, subsidized seeds and bought their harvest which ranged from medicinal and aromatic plants to potatoes and beans, Saroufim said.
One of the biggest challenges facing Cultivate is that the farmers’ agricultural lands are located in different places, making it difficult to establish a mechanized irrigation system, Saroufim noted.
